Adult humans are capable of remembering prior
events by mentally traveling back in time to re‐experience those
events. In this review, the authors discuss this and other related
capabilities, considering evidence from such diverse sources as brain
imaging, neuropsychological experiments, clinical observations, and
developmental psychology. The evidence supports a preliminary theory of
episodic remembering, which holds that the prefrontal cortex plays a
critical, supervisory role in empowering healthy adults with autonoetic
consciousness—the capacity to mentally represent and become aware of
subjective experiences in the past, present, and future. When a
rememberer mentally travels back in subjective time to re‐experience
his or her personal past, the result is an act of retrieval from
episodic memory.